to remain in the agreement, calling it “an important step forward.” The world’s largest petroleum producer by market capitalization, Exxon Mobil, also wanted the U.S. “Industry must now lead and not depend on government.” “Disappointed with today’s decision on the Paris Agreement,” tweeted GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt. However, Trump declared last Thursday that the Paris accord would “undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty.”Īfter the announcement, several American CEOs took to social media to voice their displeasure. Under the Paris deal signed in December 2015 by more than 190 countries, the United States agreed to reduce its emissions by more than 25 per cent below 2005 levels within two decades. may or may not do with respect to carbon policy,” said Sonja Franklin of Cenovus Energy, one of the country’s largest oilsands producers. “Just like we can’t run our business on what OPEC may or may not do with respect to oil prices, we can’t run our business on what the U.S. The research analysed the food eaten by 30,000 meat eaters, 16,000 vegetarians, 8,000 fish eaters and 2,000 vegans.Canadian energy producers already moving to lower their emissions and detail their efforts aren’t gearing down, either. ![]() In contrast, both vegetarian and fish-eating diets caused about 3.8kg of CO2 per day, while vegan diets produced only 2.9kg. The study of British people’s diets was conducted by University of Oxford scientists and found that meat-rich diets - defined as more than 100g per day - resulted in 7.2kg of carbon dioxide emissions. Separately, a second study of tens of thousands of British people’s daily eating habits shows that meat lovers’ diets cause double the climate-warming emissions of vegetarian diets. He said: “The US and Europe alike are using so much of their land in highly inefficient livestock farming systems, while so much good quality cropland is being used to grow animal feeds rather than human food.” Avoiding excessive meat consumption, especially beef, is good for the environment.” But the message for the consumer is even stronger. Prof Mark Sutton, at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said: “Governments should consider these messages carefully if they want to improve overall production efficiency and reduce the environmental impacts. “ Another recent study implies the single biggest intervention to free up calories that could be used to feed people would be not to use grains for beef production in the US.” However, he said the subject was always controversial: “This opens a real can of worms.” “The biggest intervention people could make towards reducing their carbon footprints would not be to abandon cars, but to eat significantly less red meat,” Benton said. “It captures the big picture,” he said, adding that livestock is the key to the sustainability of global agriculture. Prof Tim Benton, at the University of Leeds, said the new work is based on national US data, rather than farm-level studies, and provides a useful overview. The footprint of lamb, relatively rarely eaten in the US, was not considered in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Feeding cattle on grain rather than grass exacerbates this inefficiency, although Eshel noted that even grass-fed cattle still have greater environmental footprints than other animal produce. “Only a minute fraction of the food consumed by cattle goes into the bloodstream, so the bulk of the energy is lost,” said Eshel. Beef had a far greater impact than all the others because as ruminants, cattle make far less efficient use of their feed. In that way you are having less government intervention in people’s diet and not more.”Įshel’s team analysed how much land, water and nitrogen fertiliser was needed to raise beef and compared this with poultry, pork, eggs and dairy produce. “Remove the artificial support given to the livestock industry and rising prices will do the rest. “I would strongly hope that governments stay out of people’s diet, but at the same time there are many government policies that favour of the current diet in which animals feature too prominently,” he said. He said cutting subsidies for meat production would be the least controversial way to reduce its consumption. “The big story is just how dramatically impactful beef is compared to all the others,” said Prof Gidon Eshel, at Bard College in New York state and who led the research on beef’s impact. But previous calls for people to eat less meat in order to help the environment, or preserve grain stocks, have been highly controversial. Furthermore, the huge amounts of grain and water needed to raise cattle is a concern to experts worried about feeding an extra 2 billion people by 2050. Agriculture is a significant driver of global warming and causes 15% of all emissions, half of which are from livestock.
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